D&D 5E Wealth by level

[ZickZak]

Hello,
what amount of gold will a PC have by the time they are level 6?

I ve calculated 1,000 - 2,680 gold on this site, depends on what "cumulative" means really...
And here on EnWorld some guy says they should have 4,500 gp.

So considering you play over a course of campaign and reach level 6, what gold should one PC have?

Thank you

 

[Tallifer]

I miss the 4th Edition chart of expected wealth and the corresponding gold-piece value of magical items for ease of calculating appropriate rewards. Nowadays I just rely on bounded accuracy to make up for the fact that my players get very little treasure beyond some fluff items and necessary supplies.

 

[Nevvur]

Get ready for the "it depends" and YMMV responses to roll in.

Averaged out across the last few campaigns I've run, my players would have acquired about 2000 GP each by the time they reached level 6. That doesn't reflect the cost of purchases made over the course of the campaigns, including healing potions and other consumables, and better armor for those who wear it. Plate can usually be acquired by level 3 or 4 if the party pools their coin wealth.

I consider myself slightly on the stingy side when I compare my homebrew content to official content. Hope this perspective helps.

 

[Coroc]

Wealth by Level requires a well founded economic System. this is not included in RAW.
For a typical medieval / Renaissance Scenario:
Start with replacing all Gold with silver.
Now you got some more realistic pricing. (A sword 100 Gold or even 10 ? LOL it was 6 silver in historic England E.G.)
Next step: think about availability and rareness of items, depending on where (Big City, small village), General Situation (War / peace / plague / hunger)
Next think if and which magic items or services are buyable, that is utmost important for balancing. I typically use : a casting or scroll of a spell is ()100*spellevel^2 in silver means 1.level is 100 silver 3. Level 900 silver 9. Level 8100 silver. (Keep in mind if you did not want to Change from Gold that is Gold)
Now think about conditions for Magic trade : E.G. temple -> same faith, mage guild, is it legal? (black market)
Also determinate average expenses for daily needs depending on Lifestyle.

Now you got a solid base and now it makes sense to what wealth the Party (not a single char!) should have Access at what Level.
Hint: you can derive it all with some logic: A 1st Level Party should eventually be able to buy a single casting of a 3rd Level spell but not of a 5th Level spell, so if they had a good day raiding a Mobs vault they should total somewhat between 900 and 1600 silver (or gold if you are a RAW if possible Freak) that is 400 silver per member. An 18th Level Party should surely be able to buy some 9th Level scrolls so they should have around 50000 bucks. Keep the material Price for some spells e.g. a raise is 5000 for the Diamond.

Adjust for different campaign e.g. dark sun it would be Keramik, and metalware would cost 100 fold the Price of bone / stone / Wood.

There you are i hope that helps

 

[Coroc]

Addition to my first post: you asking about 6th Level, with my method and assuming that they should be able to buy 1 8th Level scroll they should have up to 8000 total means 2000 per char.

 

[Oofta]

I found a chart a while back that gives you the "average" wealth by level chart. Really wish I could give credit where credit is due, but I don't remember where I found it. As a bonus it also gives average treasure per level.

This is based on using standard encounters, average treasure results, etc and is by no means an official guideline and I only use it as a general rule of thumb. Especially at higher levels there seems to be an assumption of tons of gold being thrown at the characters and if you don't give it a purpose, it may not make sense.

 

[Coroc]

yea i forgot to mention that: You got to steer the amount of coin (Gold or preferable silver) which can be found. That means adjusting the Mobs treasure if applicable. Also you should rule that even if there is a market selling Magic items in your campaign, there will be no one buying them from the PCs. Otherwise an item the PCs deem not worthy keeping but worth much more than the amount you want them to own at any given time at their Level could be easily surpassed and your well thought out economic system goes down the drain.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Wealth by Level requires a well founded economic System. this is not included in RAW.
For a typical medieval / Renaissance Scenario:
Start with replacing all Gold with silver.
Now you got some more realistic pricing. (A sword 100 Gold or even 10 ? LOL it was 6 silver in historic England E.G.)

The discrepancy in the relative value of precious metals can easily be explained due to magic, dwarves, and access to the Elemental Plane of Earth making precious metals more common, thus devaluing them and causing price inflation as a result...



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[Coroc]

[MENTION=6801060]Demetrios1453[/MENTION] #8

Yes, almost any discrepancy like str20 halflings etc. can be easily explained when a Need for that arises. But just altering gold to silver is far easier, as the RAW does not even mention this discrepancy.

Making up precious metal Inflation by magic dwarves mining the elemental planes is far more of a houseruling than just renaming a thing and using the official material because you lazy, and suddenly every price in the PHB gets much more realistic (Of course change silver to copper also)

Now suddenly a trove filled with Gold is a real treasure, one you can buy a castle and a ship for, instead of only 3 new nonmagic weapons and suits of armor plus a few pints at the local drinking place.

Now you also do not have to make up things for encumbrance: How tiny are the 100000 Gold coins you cary around? Even if they are just 1 gram per coin (this is abou a penny in size) then you are carrying 100 kg (200 Pounds) of Gold around.
Imagine you want to buy swords for an army, lets take two handed swords, each IRL weighs about 6 Pounds lets say they are 100gold each (no Access to PHB atm so i make this up but it is about right) so you can buy 1000. You just traded in 100 grams of Gold for 6 Pounds of steel.
In modern life 100 grams of Gold should buy you steel worth 10000 $ that is about 20 tons.
Even Asuming half of it is the Labor and lets say medieval stell is worth 10 times modern steel how realistic is that all?

 

[Charlaquin]

Hello,
what amount of gold will a PC have by the time they are level 6?

I ve calculated 1,000 - 2,680 gold on this site, depends on what "cumulative" means really...
And here on EnWorld some guy says they should have 4,500 gp.

So considering you play over a course of campaign and reach level 6, what gold should one PC have?

Thank you

The truth is, in 5th Edition it really doesn’t matter. Once all of the characters in the party have saved up enough to buy the highest quality armor of their preferred weight class and maybe a couple of weapons, there’s basically nothing for them to spend their wealth on, or at least nothing of practical value. They could theoretically build a stronghold or something like that, but the game systems for such things are so anemic, owning a castle or whatever doesn’t really do any more for you than owning a heaping pile of precious metals and gems.

Now, this could be addressed by putting a spellcasting service and magic item economy into the game. But you’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting yourself because the books sure as hell aren’t going to help you there. At least Xanathar’s Guide finally popped the hood on expected magic item distribution. You could take a look at those tables and the rules for buying magic items in the downtime section to figure out a gp value for Magic Items by their rarity and status as major/minor, and then work out how many gp worth of Magic Items the game expects characters to have by what level. It’d take some work, but it would leave you with the actual wealth by level values 5e assumes but refuses to tell us about.